Fox News and serial health care misinformer Betsy McCaughey are baselessly stoking fears that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will force doctors to ask “intrusive” sexual history questions that are already standard medical practice.

In a New York Post op-ed, McCaughey claimed that the health care law will “turn doctors into government agents” by requiring them to ask supposedly “intrusive” questions about their patients' sexual history. McCaughey's op-ed, which cited no evidence to support her claims, was parroted by Fox & Friends First co-host Ainsley Earhardt who said, “Thanks to Obamacare, doctors will be forced to ask patients about their sex life, even if it has nothing to do with the medical treatment that they are seeking at the time”:

As Wonkette pointed out, McCaughey offered no evidence for her claims that the ACA changes existing practices. In fact, despite her fearmongering, sexual history questions are routine medical practice. The Centers For Disease Control calls such questions “an important part of a regular medical exam or physical history” and recommends that "[a] sexual history needs to be taken during a patient's initial visit, during routine preventive exams, and when you see signs of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)." In fact, the very questions that McCaughey claims doctors will now be pressured to ask are the exact questions the CDC recommends doctors ask their patients. 

In a post on The Incidental Economist, Aaron Carroll, a professor of pediatrics and director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research, accused McCaughey of inventing inaccurate “reasons to dislike Obamacare,” pointing out that doctors ask about sexual history “because having multiple sexual partners greatly increases your risk of sexually transmitted infections. They're looking out for my health, and want to advise me best on how to manage it”:

Evidently Ms. McCaughey knows some pretty crappy doctors, because if you consider it “inappropriate and unnecessary” to talk to your patients about their sex lives, then you really shouldn't be in the business. I agree that it's not necessary to ask these questions at every visit for every complaint. But seriously, a cardiologist is saying he can't imagine a single occasion when he might ask a patient about his sex life? Really? I'm speechless.

McCaughey has a long history of fearmongering about the ACA. Not only was she responsible for launching the “death panel” lie, she has consistently been proven wrong in her inflammatory attacks on Obamacare.